There is something about an abandoned, haunted amusement park that is reminiscent of an episode of "Scooby-Doo" -- particularly when there are people running around in rubber masks.

The person behind one of those rubber masks is Russ Geminn. He is also the person behind remaking East Dundee's Santa's Village into a haunted hike for the Halloween season.

From Friday and Saturday, the hike's first two days, Geminn estimates that 850 people paid $12 each for the privilege of being scared while walking through the abandoned park, at Routes 25 and 72, now a ghost of its former self after four years of sitting unused.

All of the rides have been stripped away, leaving overgrown paths and once-cheerful buildings looking like the witch's house from Hansel and Gretel. Picket fences that overlooked North Pole -- appropriate during the park's heyday -- become insidious in the dark and mist. When monsters and ghouls jump out at visitors, they seem at home in their surroundings.

Geminn, 39, had been scaring friends for years at his East Dundee home with a small haunted house he and friends created there, and wasn't looking for a new site for his fright fest. "I launched more people off my front porch" when they discovered the stuffed monster holding the bowl actually was him, Geminn said.

But while working with another haunted house group last summer, he heard that the owners of Santa's Village were interested in bringing a haunted walk to the site. When that group found another location, he contacted Chuck Black, now part of the site's holding company, to see if it was still available.

"They offered me the whole park," Geminn said. He turned it down at first, not knowing how he could finance the endeavor and knowing the park would need too much work. But by scaling the walk down to just 1/3 of a mile route, they were able to make it work, he said.

It took five people putting in 40 hour weeks, $2,000 in extension cords, and a lot of clearing of brush to get the park ready, in addition to hiring 55 people to run the park and be actors for the two weekends. He had help from the friends who aided his homegrown haunted house, including Susie Shore, Casey Krause, Dawn Geminn, Steve Harvel, Andy Alan, Mike Morrison and Kyla Hubbard.

Those visiting Sunday night said they thought a Haunted Walk was a great use of the park. When Jim Voegeli and his wife, Sara, worked at Santa's Village in high school during the late 1980s, "We called it Satan's Village," Voegeli laughed. "It was creepy when we worked here. When the park closed for the night, I always thought 'this is weird.' It was eerily silent at night."

Although he grew up in Carpentersville, Geminn never worked at Santa's Village -- he had summer jobs working in heating and air conditioning, which he still does as Dundee Heating and Air. This experience has led him to start a production company, RJG Entertainment, not only to run this event, but maybe to help find other uses for the park.